by Caryn Lix
In which case, Jasper’s family might be in trouble. That awareness was mirrored in his face, but we couldn’t help them right now. Our only hope was to make straight for Mars Mining Incorporated, find our way inside, and destroy the alien ship. With luck, they’d sent their best people after us. Maybe the headquarters was unguarded.
Jasper directed us out the service entrance and into the fake garden. He hesitated, glancing at Spring Veil Resort with an agonized expression on his face. “Jasper,” said Imani softly. “Your family will be fine.”
He shook his head, forcing a smile. “Right. If we stop the aliens from ripping them to shreds, you mean. Hopefully they’ll see that as a good excuse for abandoning them . . . again.”
“What are we going to do?” Rune demanded. “The plan . . .”
“The plan’s off,” I said dryly. We were going to distract the Mars Mining guards with a diversion in the tourist area and then sneak back to the ship while they were occupied. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to work any longer.
“We’re heading to the ship. We have a lot of power between us. We’ll blast our way in and wreak some havoc. I’m not sure what else to do at this point.”
Mia spit blood on the ground and scowled. “I like havoc.”
Rune shook her head furiously, but something crashed behind us, and she gave up. “All right, already! Whatever we’re doing, let’s just move!”
We broke into a run. Jasper led us through Mars’s side streets, avoiding attention as much as possible. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as earlier, but even at four in the morning, there were plenty of people out and about. Of course, by this time many of them were too drunk to notice us rushing past.
I scrambled over a stack of crates separating tourist Mars from its shantytown cousin, Reed on my heels. That was when his steady, strong gait broke through my worry and fear. “Your ankle!” I exclaimed. “It’s better! What happened?”
Reed’s face broke into a broad grin. I got the sense he’d been waiting for someone to ask. “I have no idea! I went to sleep thinking about how sore it was and wishing I had some painkillers. And when I woke, presto! It didn’t hurt at all. I healed myself !”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Cage sharply. “Your power doesn’t work that way.”
“You’re telling me? God knows I’ve tried hard enough in the past. But something happened. You got a better explanation?”
From Cage’s expression, it was evident he didn’t. I couldn’t come up with one either. “Do powers mutate?” I suggested as we threaded our way through the streets. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Neither have I.” Rune had drawn close behind us and was examining Reed like an interesting science project. “We should test it out.”
“What, by cutting me open and seeing if I heal? No thanks.”
“No!” Rune was so appalled, so clearly not understanding that Reed was joking, that even in the midst of this chaos, I couldn’t help laughing. Neither could Cage, apparently. For a second Rune looked angry. Then her face relaxed, and she smacked Cage in the arm. “Knock it off. I meant we should see if any of the rest of us have new powers.”
“How would we do that?” I asked dubiously.
“Hey, here’s a thought!” Mia popped into view in our midst, making everyone jump. “Let’s worry about that later and focus on, oh, I don’t know, the armed guards chasing us, or the alien ship we have to destroy. Huh? What do you think?”
I scowled at her, but she only winked in response. Danger brought Mia to life. I’d seen it before, and it never failed to creep me out.
I had to admit, though: she was good at it. Jasper and Alexei might have the most destructive powers of the group, but Mia brought a chaos all her own.
“She’s right. Come over here,” Jasper called, and we drew up behind him. He’d taken us on a different route, approaching Mars Mining from another angle. Massive walls surrounded the complex. “What do you think?” he asked. “Should I blow another hole in the wall?”
Silence followed, and I realized, with some horror, that he was asking me. I glanced around. Cage, as usual, pursed his lips in thought, considering the situation from every angle, but everyone else stared at the two of us expectantly—even Mia, who usually had an answer for everything.
Oh God. They thought I was in charge. Or me and Cage, anyway. Why did that terrify me so much? When I’d been part of Omnistellar, all I’d wanted was that sense of command. Now, with these former prisoners staring at me, the thought petrified me.
Was I a criminal mastermind now? I almost choked on the idea. I bit my tongue to stay calm, the pain focusing me as I followed Cage’s gaze. This was about preventing an alien invasion. Robo Mecha Dream Girl wouldn’t have hesitated to act. “No,” I said slowly. “Or at least, not yet.” An idea formed in my head, a glimmer of a hope with probably nothing behind it. “Mia. You heard what Reed said about healing his own ankle?”
She snorted. “If that’s what happened, sure.”
“Let’s assume for a moment that it is. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say something happened to us. Maybe on the alien ship. Maybe not. But for some reason, our powers are changing. Getting stronger.”
Cage seemed to snap out of a trance, his focus shifting abruptly to me. “I see what you’re saying,” he said.
“How sweet.” Reed scowled. “Want to fill the rest of us in?”
I clenched my fists to stop their trembling and managed to meet Mia’s piercing gaze. “I’m wondering if Mia can make Jasper invisible.”
They draw near.
Sinews curl. Tendons awaken.
Glimmering through time and space.
They cut. They drive.
They are one and many and all and few. They consume. They harvest.
The harvest is broken.
Tendrils unfurl.
Fully.
Fully.
Awake.
TWELVE
COMPLETE SILENCE GREETED MY SUGGESTION. Then Mia snorted loudly. “You’re joking.”
“Why?” Cage demanded.
“Because it doesn’t work that way, genius.”
“Have you tried?”
“Oh, for the love of . . .” Mia threw up her hands in disgust. “Yes, I’ve tried. My invisibility affects me and a limited range of things touching me. My clothes, for instance. I can make your hand invisible if you stand close and keep it on my shoulder. Is that useful to you, Cage?”
I glanced over my shoulder nervously. So far, I’d heard no signs of pursuit, but Mia was really loud. And those guards had to be back there somewhere. “Have you tried since we left the alien ship?” Her silent scowl was answer enough. “Will you give it another shot? Please? Humor me? I’ll . . .” I tried to think of something to bribe Mia. What did she like? Violence? Chaos? Guns?
Guns. My heart stuttered in my chest, but I forced the words out. “I won’t say another word about that gun in your waistband ever again.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s almost worth it. Almost.”
Cage sighed heavily. “Mia . . .”
“Oh, fine,” she said. “Sorry, Jasper.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. Jasper shrugged, his dark gaze boring into me rather than her.
Mia shimmered and vanished. Her voice came from nowhere, more hollow and disembodied than usual. “See?”
“Mia,” said Imani, her voice strangled, “his arm disappeared.”
A long silence followed, during which we all stared at the place where Jasper’s arm should be. “Weird,” he said in seeming fascination, flexing the muscles in his shoulders. “I still feel it, but I don’t see it. Mia, do you not see yourself when you’re invisible?”
“Shut up,” she replied. Another long moment passed—and then Jasper faded out of existence.
“I’ll be damned,” said Reed. “I did heal myself.”
Alexei frowned. “Mia mine, how are you doing that?”
“How the hell should I know?” She and Jasper both reappear
ed, and for the first time since I’d met her, Mia didn’t appear confident. Her eyes were wide, and her hands trembled. Without her characteristic brashness, years slid away. I never thought of Mia as a teenager, someone my own age, but now she looked it. I didn’t even know how old she was. She could be years younger than me.
Mia turned to Alexei, her voice a bit quicker and higher than usual. “What’s going on, Lex?”
He shook his head, and I frowned, working things through. “Something happened. I don’t know what, but our powers are increasing.” Or at least, some of our powers. What about mine? “This could be the thing that turns the tide in our favor,” I continued, my excitement growing. “Increased powers that Omnistellar doesn’t know about? That’s exactly what we need to—”
“Oh, that’s fine for you,” Mia snarled with such ferocity I retreated a step. “With your month-old powers and your sheltered Omnistellar past. But it’s different for us. Our abilities are part of who we are. How would you feel if you woke up and your eyes were suddenly a different color?”
I gaped at her in disbelief. “Mia, your power didn’t change. It got stronger. How is that not a good thing, especially in this situation?” And do you have any idea, any, what I would give to have your problem? Not to mention the fact that, once again, Mia was setting me apart, tossing me to the side, making sure I knew she didn’t fully trust me. Maybe no one did. I was still different from them, not Omnistellar, but not fully an anomaly, either, at least not in their eyes. Where did that leave me?
If she realized she’d hurt me, Mia didn’t show it. “Stronger, weaker, it’s still something happening to my body that I can’t control. Sure, it might be useful now. But what if this is just the beginning? What if my powers keep changing? How am I supposed to predict anything if I can’t even predict my own abilities?” Her hands clenched into fists, her arms steel bolts of tension.
Cage raked his hands through his hair, standing it on edge. “I hear you, Mia. But for now, can we focus on using the resources available to us? Please?”
She hesitated a moment, and something clattered in the distance. We all froze. It was probably nothing. “I’ll be right back,” said Mia, and vanished.
“Great,” I snapped. Her comments strained me more than I wanted to admit. They drove home the fact that even though I’d thrown myself fully in with the others, they hadn’t accepted me. I wasn’t one of them, and I sure as hell wasn’t Omnistellar. Tension edged along my neck, creeping up my skull and setting off a pounding headache behind my eyes.
“Give her a second,” Alexei said calmly.
Of course. Mia could throw a table at a waiter in a crowded restaurant and Alexei would find a way to excuse it. My teeth clenched, and words bubbled in my throat, stumbling over one another in their rush to escape.
“It’s okay,” said Cage softly, and Rune took my hand, not in warning or restraint but in support. It was enough to make me swallow the words. I still didn’t know where things sat between me and Cage, but we’d made some progress. He’d given me answers openly and honestly and that had to mean something. Rune, I loved without reservation. She was the sister I’d never had. I squeezed her hand gratefully and tried not to think about the fact that our entire relationship was founded on a lie. Sometime, and sometime soon, she’d learn the truth. Would she still be my friend once she did?
“Don’t take it personally,” Reed told me, breaking into my thoughts. “It’s just Mia being Mia.”
Jasper’s eyes took on a calculating look. “For what it’s worth, I’m very curious to see what my powers can do now.”
“And another healer could be useful.” Imani flashed me a smile. “With a bit of luck, maybe I’ll be able to heal someone else for once.”
“Mia isn’t angry at you,” Alexei added, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “She doesn’t like surprises. She’ll be back.”
Well, I could sympathize with her dislike of surprises, especially since Sanctuary. And the others’ support gave me a rush of strength, one I wasn’t sure I deserved. I caught Cage’s eye, and he shook his head in warning. It didn’t matter. As soon as we were out of danger, I was telling them the truth.
A moment later Mia did indeed return, her expression back to normal and a Mars Mining ID card clutched triumphantly between her fingers. Even in taking a moment to cope, she was working. “All right,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
* * *
An ID card wouldn’t get us into the more sensitive areas of the complex. If we’d been dealing with Omnistellar, it wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere at all. We had omnicards as backups to our retinal scans, but they were smaller and more secure than ID cards, which were issued to every company employee. Mars Mining spent most of their budget on their dome tech, though, and parts of the facility were still old-fashioned. Jupiter’s colonies, which had only sprung up over the last decade, used Mars Mining’s proprietary tech, and my mom used to say Mars Mining was on the way up because of that. The moons had their own corporation, Phantasmatech, but they relied on Mars Mining for their very existence. As Jupiter’s colonies grew, so would Mars’s royalties and prestige. For now, though, they were biding their time until their big windfall. Hence the ID cards, a cheap but effective method of controlling access to your facility—as long as no one stole them.
An ID card would at least get us through the front gate.
We crouched in an alley. The shadows grew lighter, hints of illumination edging across the Martian sky, Phobos still visible above. Much longer and we’d have miners leaving their homes, heading for work. I didn’t like to think what they’d do if they stumbled across us lurking outside Mars HQ. All I could do now was wait, though, until Mia and Jasper made their move.
I huddled against Cage, Reed on my left, his nervous energy infectious. He never stopped moving, always drumming his fingers against his thighs, quirking his head from side to side, or just blinking rapidly in thought. Cage, on the other hand, stayed still as a statue, his long, lean body relaxed and deceptively loose, even though I knew from experience he was coiled and ready for action.
Was his power shifting? Was mine? If it shifted enough, I might learn to communicate with the aliens. On Sanctuary, I’d tried to understand them and caught glimmers of meaning, and on their ship, I’d come to understand their written language with limited capacity. I imagined having the ability to talk to those things, to understand their thoughts as they flew out of the darkness and slashed us with their claws and—
Cage nudged me. “Relax,” he murmured, and I realized I was breathing in short, sharp gasps, my muscles so tense they ached.
I blinked at him in the shadows. “How are you so calm?” It wasn’t just what we were doing. Ever since Sanctuary, aliens snapped from the corners of my imagination.
“Experience.” He shrugged, then squeezed my arm. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got this.”
His confidence gave me a burst of renewed hope. As much as I’d always tried for self-reliance, it was so good to have someone else believe in me. “Thanks,” I whispered, knowing the word didn’t convey the depth of my appreciation.
He leaned in so close his lips almost touched my ear. “Kenzie, I . . . about what you said earlier. About Matt. I never meant to order you around, to tell you what to do. I only—”
As if on cue, my wrist comm gave three short buzzes against my skin, the signal I’d prearranged with Jasper. “That’s it,” I announced, cursing everyone’s timing. Talking with Cage would have to wait. “West wall.”
We split into two groups: me, Cage, and Reed to the left, Alexei, Imani, and Rune to the right. We were going with a quick and sloppy version of our original plan, and I had no idea if it would work.
I expected the wall to blow open in shards of metal, but instead it was more of a controlled disintegration. The material collapsed softly, scraps curling and floating away like paper caught in a flame. The resulting hole in the wall revealed Mia and Jasper, posed like action movie stars around
the crumpled bodies of three Mars Mining guards. “Did you kill them?” I demanded.
I earned myself two identically dirty looks. “They’re unconscious,” snapped Mia. “Come on. Let’s move before more of them show up.”
This early in the morning, Mars Mining was virtually deserted, but red lights and blaring alarms warned that Jasper’s reorganization of the wall had not gone unnoticed. Rune dove for the nearest panel and jammed her hands inside. The alarms stilled, and nearby doors sprang open. “Should be clear,” she announced.
We ran through several hallways, following Rune, who had memorized the headquarters layout from a computer printout earlier that night. Before long, we reached familiar territory, returning to the landing pad. We were banking on the ship being too large to move and impossible for anyone but Rune and me to pilot. I had no idea what we’d do if it wasn’t where we’d left it.
It had better be where we’d left it. In spite of our desperation to destroy it, I thought of the alien ship as ours. We’d earned it. It was a profoundly ridiculous thought, but the idea of Mars Mining messing around inside our ship continued to rankle.
Two guards skidded around the corner ahead of us, weapons raised. “Hands up!” one of them bellowed.
Two sharp crackles sounded behind me, and the guards stiffened and collapsed.
I spun, mouth open, to find Imani lowering the stun gun. “Nice shot,” I managed.
She flushed. “Thanks.” A slight smile touched her lips. “My grandfather used to take Aliya and me hunting. I guess the principles are the same.” It was the first time she’d mentioned her sister in weeks, and her voice stuttered on the name. My heart ached for her. For all the time we’d spent together, Imani and I had never discussed our shared losses. Maybe it was soon time we did.
We had the presence of mind to relieve the guards of their weapons. I took one stun gun and Reed took the other. I was surprised how much better I felt with the gun in my hands. After what had happened with Matt, I never wanted to hold a real firearm again, but the stun gun was smooth and familiar. I could defend myself without killing anyone. I was instantly less dependent on the others, more in control, more myself. Omnistellar might have been behind me, but I hadn’t eradicated the guard from my system just yet.